How do i do it? do i just drop it in? Frozen? or do i stuff it first....

 

Get your pot of oil nice and hot, slowly drop in a THAWED turkey, and let it cook to a crispy golden brown. Make sure it's completely thawed or you'll be spending turkey day in the emergency room and you'll get to know your local fire marshall by name.

 

I have never cooked nor had deep fried turkey. I always cook oven roasted. I'll have to try that someday.

 

Get the oil to about 360, then slowly drop in the THAWED turkey. Cook it for 3 minutes per pound, while keeping the oil at 350. Make sure you fill the turkey frier with water first and then put the turkey in, while still packaged. From this you can figure out how much oil you are going to need to completely cover the turkey without having to much spill over. Mark the water amount on the inside of the frier with a magic marker, after removing the turkey. Make sure you get it completely dry before putting oil in and beginning the heating process. WATER + HOT OIL = FRIED HUMAN!! And please don't be the one person on the news every Thanksgiving that tried to deep fry their turkey in the house. I fry my turkey in the middle of the back yard, which in turn leaves a nice burn mark in the grass all winter

 

O man is fried turkey good! I was watching a thing on TV today that showed how dangerous it was.. Make sure the cooker is far away from your house or garage.

 

But nobody answered him about stuffing it......can you? You must have to tie the legs up real good.

 

You can't. At tyhe time the meat is cooked and the skin golden brown, the stuffing would probably still be cold. If cooked till the stuffing was done, the rest of it would be crispy critter. Also the stuffing would probably soak up a lot of oil.

 

Litenin75's got good pointers for you - us Southern folk deep fry everything, so listen up.

DO NOT throw a frozen buzzard in three (or more) gallons of hot oil! You will be posting from your local hospital's burn ward if you do this!

Before you fill the pot with oil, stick your turkey in it and fill it with water to find out how much liquid your turkey will displace so you don't overfill it with oil. It takes less oil than you'd think, the one or two we've done took no more than about 3 gallons or so. Get a fry thermometer if you don't have one already, try to keep the oil around 350ish degrees while cooking. You need a hellacious burner for this, and make sure you don't run out of propane in the middle of your fry - bad policy. And by Gawd, keep a fire extinguisher nearby; deep fried turkeys, while awesomely delicious, can get out of hand in a hurry. Keeping kids and pets away from the vat while it's doing it's thing goes without saying. Oh, and do this on a patch of grass in your back yard or something - you'll never get the oil stains out of a wood porch or concrete driveway, not to mention that wood burns.

3.5 minutes or so for every pound of bird. Once you drop that sucker in there, don't even think about walking away. And, if everything goes as planned, be prepared to eat the best turkey you've ever had in your life. Seriously. After deep frying one, I can't see how anyone else would eat one any other way...except smoking maybe, I want to try that sometime.

ETA - And you can't stuff it. The stuffing will just absorb a bunch of oil during frying and come out looking like something a turkey would throw up. Just don't do it.

 

I will be frying an 18.5 lb'er in about three hours, and it requires about 4.5 gallons of oil. (peanut, of course) I'm not a rank amateur with this stuff, this will be my 8th Thanksgiving doing it.

(oh, and it's probably too late for the original poster, but injecting it with a cajun marinade of some sort --- I use a custom mixture of garlic, soy sauce & various secret ingredients --- makes it even better)

Good luck and keep the fire extinguisher or a fire blanket handy!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

 

I'm sure these guys were going for drama (they just toss the
first one in, and they have the oil way to high) but here is some fun video demonstarting why you don't do these inside.

http://www.ul.com/turkeyfryers/

 

Well since I fried 3 turkeys and a chicken last night I can fill in the details for you. Here's what I do that always puts a smile on everyone's face.

Preparation:
1) Thaw the turkey like you always would.

2) Remove the giblets, and rinse the outside of the turkey.

3) Remove the plastic pop-up timer, the wire that holds the legs together,
the chunk of skin from the tail and the large flap of skin that is around the
base of the neck.

4) Marinate the turkey. I like to use Creole butter marinade as a base and doctor it up from there. Louisiana hot sauce, garlic powder, chili powder and Tony Chaserie's seasoning all get put into the marinade. This is the time to experiment, once I even put a couple of shots of Jack D into the mix. Use a needle and load the bird up. I squirt into all of the larger spots several times from several directions until my witch's brew is oozing from all over the bird.

5) Put the bird in the fridge until you are ready to fry him.

Cooking
1) Use Peanut oil don't cheap out, your bird will suffer if you do.

2) Find a spot OUTSIDE AWAY FROM ANYTHING THAT COULD BURN.

3) Set up your cooker, pour in the right amount of oil, and light the burner. The optimum temperature to cook at is 350. Let your oil stabilize for a few minutes before you drop the bird in. The temperature of the oil will drop when you put the bird in so getting the oil up to 375 before works out nicely.

4) Put the cooking rack through the neck of the turkey so that the legs are pointing up and the inside is open. You want the oil to be able to flow through the turkey so that the inside and outside both cook.

5) Put the bird into the oil. Be careful, hot oil will be going everywhere. I like to use a rope and someone else to help. Run a section of rope through the hook that you use to pull the turkey, hook onto the rack. Stand back 6' or so and slowly lower the bird into the pot. Using the rope will give you control and distance, which is good because the oil will flare up, and splatter when the turkey goes in.

6) Cook for 3 min a pound + some. ALWAYS use a thermometer to check the temperature of the meat. Poultry is done when the most inner part is 180. If the thighs and breasts are not 180 put it back in for a few minutes.

I always cook the bird the night before and store it in the fridge overnight. I reheat before I eat dinner the next day. Also, I like to do a bunch of turkeys at once. Get a bunch of friends together and party the night before.

Joe

 

Have been frying turkeys and outer critters for years.

Turkey is great, but if you want some thing really good, do a few cornish hens, the nice thing is you give everyone their own, and you don't have to carve anything,

I will melt a stick of butter, 1/3 cup white vinegar, garlic powder, onion powder, salt and pepper to taste and a few shots of hot sauce. Cook all of the above together, cool slightly, inject throughout bird. Strain mixtuer if you don't want tracks.

A nice injected and rubbed beef roast is great deep fried also.

I smoke more turkeys and other criiters than I deep fry. Takes longer but less work.

Only 2 people at the house, so when I do deep fry, I do and extra one or two and then cut up and vacpac and freeze.

 

Way back in the day mom would oven roast the turkey. Then me and dad got into smoking them. Thought that was pretty good. Until ~5 years ago when I found frying. I will NEVER eat my turkey any other way. I use the Cajun Injector from the market. I inject the whole bottle into the turkey.

You don't know what you are missing LT.

 

Well it sounds good.

 

Drop the bird in frozen as fast as possbile. For a tastier bird, get the oil up to about 450*. Once the bird is in, drop in a few pounds of ice to make it extra juicy...